"10 Questions to..." is a series of short interviews with architects and female architects, to whom we address the same pool of questions. In today's installment of the mini-interview about the most important buildings and the most inspiring city, Iwona Buczkowska, an architect who this year was honored by the Dezeen portal on its list of twenty-two designers from around the world who you need to know, answered.
Iwona Buczkowska - architect and urban planner, a graduate of École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris. Since 1978 she has run her own studio in Ivry-sur-Seine. She creates residential buildings in the spirit of the garden-terrace concept developed on a neighborhood scale by Jean Renaudie as a development of the late modernist concepts of the Team X group. She was awarded a gold medal and a special prize at the 5th World Architecture Biennale in Sofia in 1989 for her design of the Le Blanc-Mesnil housing development, the Silver Medal of the French Academy of Architecture for lifetime achievement in 1994, and the People's Choice Award for the Le Blanc-Mesnil neighborhood in 2003 (voting via the Internet). She was awarded the Label d'architecture du XX siècle for her design of a residential building in Saint-Dizier. She did design work at the École nationale supérieure d'architecture et de paysage de Lille and the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles.
1. architecture in three words...?
a. Space (internal and external - the art of shaping it).
b. Proportions.
c. Light.
2. the three most important buildings for you...?
I limit myself to the 20th century:
a. Berlin Philharmonic Hall, designed by Hans Scharoun.
b. Taliesin West, Arizona, proj.: Frank Lloyd Wright.
c. Cube houses, Helmond, proj.: Piet Blom.
3. the most important book on architecture...?
"Apprendre à voir l'architecture" (Learn to look at architecture), by Bruno Zevi.
4. most inspiring city and why...?
Many cities inspire us with their dynamism. The tremendous artistic creativity that developed in Paris from the 1920s or 1960s fascinates. However, from a historical perspective, Venice will remain an inspiration (except for tourists), as a symbiosis of landscape, urbanism, architecture, art and a certain ecology: spaces are for pedestrians. An incredible example of the process of urban development in a place a priori not designed for it and unfriendly, where the mud of the lagoon had to be drained, connecting small inhabited islands (each with its own square and church) into a whole. To date, some are legible in the city's labyrinthine plan. A city with a certain democracy (the Doge was elected), where the carnival lasted six months of the year (!), allowing, thanks to masks and carnival costumes, direct contact between social classes in defiance of the classical hierarchy of society. If one assumes that architecture, urban planning should create an environment that gives residents pleasure in life(plaisir de vivre) - Venice was and is an optimistic example of this. An example to be inspired by, fighting for a symbiosis of landscape, urbanism, architecture and the arts, relying, as the Venetians did, on enlightened investors, which we are unfortunately somewhat lacking today....
5. architect with whom you would like to design something and why...?
Junya Ishigami - "Freeing Architecture" - a look at architecture through the landscape.
6. hand drawing or computer drawing?
First hand-drawn, then computerized.
7. mockup or 3D model?
First a mock-up, then there can be a model.
8. modernism or postmodernism?
Some modernism.
Modernism has very different faces in Europe, still others in the US. "Free plan"(plan libre) and skeletal structures are a starting point for me, but the goal is to design spaces that are not subject to dogma, even if they are modernist.
9. after-hours work or sports?
Depending on the amount of work and its type. There are no rules: there can be work, book, concert, cinema or theater, there can be sports.
10. architecture or business?
Architecture.
You can read more about Iwona Buczkowska's work in an interview in the latest issue of A&B - Lodz - regeneration of the industrial city
